Bob Dylan has won legal penalties against two lawyers who filed — and then quickly dropped — a lawsuit accusing the music legend of sexually abusing a child in the 1960s.
Filed in 2021, the case featured salacious allegations about Dylan, but music historians quickly said it wasn’t even chronologically plausible — and the unnamed accuser abruptly dismissed the case after the star’s lawyers accused her of destroying key evidence.
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In a decision issued Wednesday (Aug. 13), a federal appeals court upheld monetary penalties against the woman’s lawyers (Daniel W. Isaacs and Peter J. Gleason), whom Dylan’s attorneys have accused of making “heinous and false allegations” without sufficient vetting.
Dylan’s lawyers argued that they only found out the accuser had failed to turn over crucial emails after sending subpoenas — an argument that the appeals court called “particularly telling” in the new ruling against Isaacs and Gleason.
“Had [Dylan]’s counsel not sought this third-party discovery, it is probable that responsive communications in [the accuser]’s possession might never have come to light,” wrote the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. “And all of this transpired despite the [judge]’s repeated, emphatic warnings.”
Though hotly contested by both sides, the penalties against the lawyers are relatively modest: $5,000 against Isaacs and $3,000 against Gleason. In court filings, Dylan’s lawyers have called them “essentially symbolic” and a “fraction” of the money he spent defeating the case.
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Isaacs and Gleason’s client, identified in court documents only as J.C., filed her case in August 2021, claiming Dylan had abused her multiple times at Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel in April and May 1965. The lawsuit said he provided her with drugs and alcohol and “exploited” his status as part of a plan to “sexually molest her.”
Dylan vehemently denied the allegations, and rock historians quickly cast doubt on them, saying the folk star was on tour in California and overseas during the months in question. Less than a year after the case was filed, it was dropped without a settlement.
That abrupt end came after months of chaos. Dylan’s lawyers first accused Isaacs and Gleason of refusing to cooperate with discovery, then charged that their client, J.C., had deleted key evidence. At one point, a judge implored the two lawyers to comply with such orders “for the love of god.”
Even after the case was dropped, Dylan’s attorneys sought harsh sanctions, arguing that the pair of lawyers should not be allowed to simply walk away from the case after leveling such serious allegations and then refusing to properly litigate them.
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After the judge handed down the $8,000 combined sanction, the pair of lawyers appealed the penalty to the Second Circuit, arguing that they had “repeatedly attempted” to get their “recalcitrant” client to hand over the materials in question. They called it “manifestly unjust” to hold them responsible for the accuser’s conduct.
But Dylan’s lawyers pressed the court to uphold the fine, arguing that even the “most rudimentary investigation would have revealed the claims to be false” and that Isaacs and Gleason had stymied the process by which Dylan could “vindicate his innocence.”
“Mr. Dylan was subjected to almost a year of litigation — facing the most vile allegations imaginable — during which appellants engaged in a pattern of deliberate discovery misconduct that hindered Mr. Dylan’s ability to fight this false claim,” his lawyers wrote. “Now, Appellants bring this appeal in a last-ditch effort to get away scot-free.”
In Wednesday’s decision, the appeals court sided firmly with Dylan, rejecting Isaacs and Gleason’s various arguments against the sanctions. The judges cited an earlier decision that says such penalties are based “not only [on] the straw that finally broke the camel’s back” but on “all the straws that the recalcitrant party piled on over the course of the lawsuit.”
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“Here, straws abound,” the appeals court wrote. “The record is replete with instances of Isaacs and Gleason failing to discharge their discovery obligations under the relevant law and district court’s orders.”
In a detailed statement to Billboard, Gleason said he was “deeply disappointed” with the ruling but that “this matter is not over.” He said his client had made “what we believed to be credible allegations” against Dylan; he also claimed that Dylan’s law firm, the prestigious Gibson Dunn, had previously represented him personally and had a conflict of interest in the proceedings.
“In my humble opinion, this whole matter reeks of the courts allowing the largess of the white shoe law firms tipping the scales of justice in their favor,” Gleason said. “I fully intend to delve deep into the integrity of the court.”
In his own statement to Billboard, Dylan’s attorney, Brian Ascher, said the arguments regarding Gibson Dunn had already been “summarily rejected” by the judge overseeing the case when it was raised during the litigation: “This is sour grapes,” Ascher said.
